Organize!

Whether we are engaging in acts of resistance or creating new, alternative institutions, we need to create sustainable, democratic organizations that empower their members while also protecting against disruption. This section provides articles about effective organizing, creating democratic decision-making structures, building coalitions with other groups, and more. Visit the Resources Page for tools to assist your organizing efforts.

Barbara Bowen Passes The Torch

June 18, 2021 John Tarleton, The Indypendent. Organize! Higher Education, New York City (NYC), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It was the spring of 2000 and neoliberalism was flowering all across the land when a contingent of unabashedly left-wing professors at the City University of New York running as the New Caucus won control of their dormant faculty union. With the left excluded from power almost everywhere and most of the labor movement in a decades-long slumber, the New Caucus’s victory at the largest urban university system in the country marked a rare breakthrough. The newly elected leaders of the Professional Staff Congress had been protesting the defunding of CUNY for years. In March 1995, some of them donned their academic robes and joined 20,000 CUNY students in an unpermitted march near Rudy Giuliani’s City Hall that ended with mounted police charging into the crowd on horses.

Organizing Poultry Workers Starts With Learning Together

June 16, 2021 Olivia Paschal, Facing South. Organize! Food Industry, Immigration, South, Worker Rights and Jobs

She's been denounced by Tyson Foods as a "radical union organizer," but Magaly Licolli doesn't organize unions — she organizes workers. Licolli is a leader in the workers' center movement that since the 1970s has been organizing labor difficult to formally unionize. An immigrant who developed a passion for popular education through her theater education in Mexico, Licolli served as the executive director of the now-defunct Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center, a nonprofit founded in 2007 to serve the region's poultry workers, where she worked with local community organizer Fernando Garcia. In 2019 Licolli co-founded Venceremos (Spanish for "we will win"), a nonprofit community center with a similar mission. Venceremos, like the NWAWJC, belongs to the Food Chain Workers Alliance, a coalition of over 30 similar worker-based organizations representing some 375,000 food workers in the U.S. and Canada.

In The Southeast, Climate Change Finds A Landscape Ravaged By Inequality

June 16, 2021 Paul Gordon, In These Times. Organize! climate crisis, Climate Justice, Green New Deal, South

The southeastern United States sees more billion-dollar disasters than any other region in the country. The region also sees more different kinds of natural disasters than other parts of the country. In 2020, six billion-dollar hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast, tornado events caused 76 fatalities and torrential rainfall, up 30% since the 1950s, caused severe flooding. And climate change is making everything worse by turning up the dial of intensity on the region’s existing environmental and social vulnerabilities. If, for example, flooding was a problem historically, climate change will make it endemic. If environmental racism already puts stress on people of color, climate change will make the burden even heavier. According to a 2017 study published in the journal Science, some U.S. counties could lose as much as 20% of their annual GDP as a result of damage from unmitigated climate change.

How Delivery Workers Are Organizing To Take On The Apps

June 14, 2021 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Organize! Gig Workers, New York City (NYC), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

More than 2,000 food couriers snarled traffic in Times Square through pouring rain in protest April 21 demanding better working conditions and protection from violent assaults. The mass demonstration was organized by Los Deliveristas Unidos, a loose network of immigrant gig workers that was born in the strife of the pandemic last year through online chat groups on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Since then, Los Deliveristas have coalesced into an organization with support from the Brooklyn-based Worker’s Justice Project (WJP), a worker center that organizes immigrants in construction and service sector jobs. WJP has received backing from Service Employees Local 32BJ. Learn more about Los Deliveristas in our June cover story, “Can a Driver Uprising Make Food Apps Deliver?”

Policing And Militarism Go Hand In Hand

June 11, 2021 Destiny Harris, Truthout. Organize! Abolish Police, Defund the police, Police, Wars and Militarism

Policing and militarism are a two-headed monster that protects and upholds the foundation upon which racial capitalism was built — exploitation of the lives of poor Black and Brown people. Although much attention has been placed on recent expansions of police militarization, these threads have long been intertwined. For Black Americans, police have always acted as an occupying force within our communities. But during the 1960s, a decade of unprecedented Black radical resistance, the lines between police and military and national defense became even more blurred. On December 8, 1969, the SWAT unit of the Los Angeles Police Department raided the Black Panther Party’s headquarters in Los Angeles, California.

Resistance And Aid

June 8, 2021 Ramazan Mendanlioglu, Red Pepper. Organize! Community organizing, Democratization, Rojava, Syria

In the villages, cities and regions of Rojava, in the predominantly Kurdish north east of Syria, political upheaval has resulted in the largely decentralised self-administration of many areas, including health, economy, law, education and internal security. The Rojava revolution led to both the secularisation and democratisation of institutions that had, until then, been controlled by an elitist-centralist national state. But what exactly does this mean? How is Rojava’s decentralisation expressed in everyday life? Located in north eastern Rojava, Amûdê County demonstrates what decentralisation and self-administration can look like in practice. Starting at the end of government rule in 2012, its communes, district people’s council and the municipality (Şaredarî) were all subjected to processes of democratisation.

Assange’s Father On US Tour–First Stop Miami

June 6, 2021 Consortium News. Organize! Extradition, Julian Assange, Legal System, Wikileaks

Organized by Assange Defense, John and Gabriel Shipton, Julian Assange’s father and brother, will begin the #HomeRun4Julian tour in Miami on June 6 via a live-streamed event. The Shiptons are scheduled to make stops on both coasts and the Midwest before concluding the tour in the nation’s capital. Assange’s family members will meet with activists, press, and policymakers to raise awareness of the importance of protecting whistleblowers and journalists, and to advocate for the release of Julian Assange, whom the United Nations has declared “arbitrarily detained” since 2010.

Puerto Rican Unions To Hold Biggest National Strike Since 2019

June 5, 2021 Maryam Alaniz, Left Voice. Organize! Privatization, Puerto Rico, US Imperialism, Worker Rights and Jobs

Workers in Puerto Rico are planning a national strike and demonstrations today in response to the recent privatization of the island’s power system. These are the biggest strikes on the island since 2019 when workers went on a general strike against former governor Ricardo Rosselló. Several unions in Puerto Rico made the call for a national strike yesterday during a press conference including the General Union of Workers (UGT), Solidarity Union Movement, Central Federation of Workers Local 481 / UFCW, Puerto Rican Association of University Professors, Puerto Rican Union of Workers, and the Frente Amplio de Camioneros, among others. Under the call, “Fuera LUMA!” Puerto Ricans are demanding the cancellation of a contract with the private U.S. and Canadian company LUMA Energy.

#FreeAlexSaab Delegation: First Day In Cabo Verde

June 5, 2021 Roger Harris, Popular Resistance. Organize! Alex Saab, Extradition, Sanctions, Venezuela

Sal Island, Cabo Verde - In their first full day in Cabo Verde, the emergency human rights delegation met with Saab’s lawyer and the Venezuelan ambassador, tried to meet with the local police commander, and saw firsthand the prison-house where Mr. Saab is jailed, though the heavily armed guards prevented a visit. Our delegation consists of Cabo Verdean Bishop Felipe Teixeira, Cabo Verdean politician Pericles Tavares, Sara Flounders of International Action Center, and Roger Harris of Task Force on the Americas. A year ago, immediately after Alex Saab’s plane was diverted to Cabo Verde for a technical fueling stop and he was forcibly taken off the plane.

White People’s Stake In Ending The White Republic

June 4, 2021 Erin Heaney, Organizing Upgrade. Organize! Class Struggle, Organizing networks, Racism, Right wing politics

Wing describes this multiracial base: “We need to build the independent strength of the most determined racial, social, climate, and economic justice constituencies – those that understand that inequality, war, and environmental destruction are rooted in capitalism and that the corporate class is an unstable opponent of racism and authoritarianism.”

Julian Assange’s Father And Brother Announce US Tour

June 4, 2021 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. Organize! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

The father and brother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are planning a nationwide tour of the United States next month to advocate for the release of the detained journalist and for the Biden administration to drop its extradition effort—and to highlight the broader implications that his prosecution has for global press freedom. John and Gabriel Shipton, Assange's father and brother, will kick off the #HomeRun4Julian tour in Miami on June 6, then travel to over a dozen U.S. cities for the rest of the month, wrapping up in Washington, D.C. in July. Some events will be live-streamed, and the pair plans to meet with activists, journalists, and policymakers along the away. "My brother Julian Assange has effectively been a prisoner for over a decade because he published evidence of war crimes," said Gabriel Shipton in a statement Thursday.

The Refugee Union Behind Barbed Wire

June 3, 2021 Bethany Rielly, Tribune Magazine. Organize! Human Rights, Immigrants, Pembrokeshire, Union Organizing

Priti Patel’s refugee camp experiment is finally crumbling. In March, Penally Camp in Pembrokeshire — where hundreds of asylum seekers have been held in squalid conditions since September 2020 — was closed down. The barracks, complete with razor wire-topped fences and human-shaped shooting targets, has been returned to the Ministry of Defence, and will hopefully never be used to accommodate people flee-ing wars again. The closure follows months of pressure on the Home Office by human rights groups, local campaigners, MPs, doctors, and lawyers, who ran a high-profile campaign decrying the barracks’ prison-like conditions. Less well-known, however, is the role played by asylum seekers themselves in resisting their inhumane treatment every step of the way.

Building International Solidarity: Human Relations for Global Struggle

June 1, 2021 Eepa, Indigenous Anarchist Federation. Organize! Anarchism, Communication, International Solidarity, Media

Despite the advances in technology, radical communications has not kept pace. Sure, many anarchics are aware of other struggles through communiques, news reports, or social media posts, but there is a deep rift between these casual interactions and meaningful relation building needed for resilient, effective, and meaningful struggle.

Towards A New Chilean Constitution

May 30, 2021 Barbara Fernández Melleda, Alborada. Organize! Chile, Constitution, Elections, Neoliberalism

A leaderless social movement gathering millions of people across Chile began in October 2019. After decades of protests over healthcare, pensions, education and other issues, these multiple demands converged as one general clamour for social justice and dignity. The referendum for the new constitution, one of the core objectives, would reveal that the status quo had lost legitimacy and that the Chilean people were demanding the re-foundation of the country. This meant dismantling the legacy of the Pinochet regime which benefited a handful of people who today own companies that once belonged to the Chilean State. These were privatised very quickly and cheaply during the dictatorship.Con

Why We Need International Union Solidarity Now More Than Ever

May 29, 2021 Industriall Global Union. Organize! Globalization, International Solidarity, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The voiceless and marginalized have found their collective strength and successfully resisted an assault by a corporate giant. The union dusts itself off and goes back to organizing. It’s just another day on the front line of the global struggle between capital and labour.

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